Faith Communities and Walkability

Jane Jacobs said "New ideas need old buildings." Sometimes old ideas benefit from old buildings, too. This church, built in 1919, is in one of the most walkable neighborhoods in Silverton. It comes right up to the sidewalk, providing an "edge" that makes the pedestrian feel safe and comfortable. It's also interesting to look at. (Source: Author.)

Strong Towns advocates and faith communities are natural allies; many just don’t know it yet. Both want to create neighborhoods that are safer, cleaner, and healthier, with vibrant economies that benefit everyone. A good place to begin working together is around walkability. Here’s why orienting our streets toward people who are walking (or biking, or using a wheelchair) is so powerful—and how faith communities can get involved.

Why Faith Communities Should Focus on Walkability

Dollar for dollar, the highest returning investments a city can make are investments in walkability. By “walkability” I’m not referring to walking as recreation but rather walking as transportation. Neighborhoods in which people can easily walk to meet their daily needs—to get to work or school, to shop, to attend a club or worship service, to visit friends and family—are more financially productive than those neighborhoods that require a drive to everything. (In fact, poorer neighborhoods built around the more walkable traditional development pattern often end up subsidizing more affluent auto-oriented neighborhoods.) 

City planner Jeff Speck, the economist Joe Cortright, and others have demonstrated that walkability is correlated with higher home values and more jobs, and it encourages business activity. Robert Steuteville, editor of Public Square: A CNU Journal, has written persuasively that walkability isn’t a luxury perk reserved for the wealthy, but an indispensable part of making our neighborhoods more equitable: “Many walkable neighborhoods have low housing and low transportation costs—a combination that is affordable even to low-income households and is available nowhere else in metropolitan areas. That reality helps to explain why a disproportionate share of poor people live in traditional cities. They choose walkable neighborhoods partly for economic reasons.”

All transportation requires infrastructure investments, but as Speck wrote in Walkable City Rules, infrastructure for walking and biking is “little more than a rounding error when compared to the cost of our roads.” Note: This isn’t car infrastructure masquerading as “pedestrian infrastructure,” but infrastructure investments—sidewalks, protected bike lanes, etc.—that actually make it safer, more convenient, and more comfortable for people on foot, on bike, and using wheelchairs.

The high returns on walkability aren’t just economic. Walkable neighborhoods contribute to better health, stronger communities, and a cleaner environment.

(Source: Unsplash.)

In addition to being safer from the dangers of speeding vehicles, people who live in places where they can walk as part of their daily routine have lower rates of obesity and are less likely to suffer from diabetes and other obesity-related diseases. This is according to a paper published in the Touro Law Review by Michael Lewyn, a law school professor and Strong Towns member. Lewyn cites a study by three Arizona State University scholars who found that a 1% increase on their walkability index was associated with numerous health benefits, including 49% lower likelihood of diabetes, 39% lower likelihood for hypertension, and 40% lower likelihood for heart disease.

Walking is good for emotional, spiritual, and even civic health as well. Walkability helps combat the epidemic of loneliness in our communities. Places that all but require car travel can exclude huge swaths of the population, including kids and young teenagers, many of the elderly, people who can’t afford to own a vehicle, people who can’t drive, and people who don’t want to drive. A 2015 report from the U.S. Surgeon General describes how the built environment can bring people together—offering more opportunities for personal interaction and social involvement—or can keep them apart. In walkable communities, “people can walk with family members or friends, stop to chat with neighbors while walking their dog, walk to a local store or bus stop with a friend, meet regularly for a group walk, or participate in a ‘walking meeting’ with colleagues. These interactions help strengthen the personal bonds that bring people and communities together, creating more social cohesion.” 

The opposite is also true, as described by Robert Putnam in his book Bowling Alone. A political scientist known for his study of social capital, Putnam found a strong correlation between commute times and civic engagement. Each 10 additional minutes in daily commute time cut community involvement by 10%: “fewer public meetings attended, fewer committees chaired, fewer petitions signed, fewer church services attended, and so on,” he wrote. In his book Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time, Speck points to a 2010 study of two cities in New Hampshire that surveyed residents in more walkable locations and less walkable locations. Researchers found that people living in more walkable neighborhoods were more likely to participate in community projects and clubs, were more likely to volunteer, and were more likely to trust their neighbors.

As evidenced by a wide range of groups—Green Muslims,  Hazon, greenfaith, Interfaith Power & Light, the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, Blessed Earth, and A Rocha, among others—many people include care for nature as part of living out their faith. According to the 2015 Surgeon General’s report mentioned above, multiple studies have shown that when the built environment becomes more walkable and bikeable, people start walking and biking. (Imagine that!) And more people walking and biking results in “lower emissions of carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide, and particulate matter.” We at Strong Towns believe that what cities must do to address their insolvency crisis is also the most immediate and radical thing we can do right now to cut emissions: replace automobile trips with biking and walking.

How Can Faith Communities Help Make Their Neighborhoods More Walkable

A couple years ago, two friends of Strong Towns started The Embedded Church Podcast, a show about the intersection of faith communities and the built environment. The hosts are Eric O. Jacobsen, a pastor and author in Tacoma who has been featured twice on the Strong Towns Podcast, and Sara Joy Proppe, the founder of the Proximity Project (and a longtime Strong Towns contributor). The Embedded Church is geared toward a Christian audience, but I believe people of other faiths can find it inspiring and educational, as well.

Over the holidays I started catching up on some back episodes. Through the podcast, I took up Eric and Sara’s invitation to read Jeff Speck’s Walkable City. My colleagues, as well as a huge number of Strong Towns members, know and love Speck’s work. I’m surprised—and a little embarrassed—that I hadn’t read the book before. Now that I’ve finished the excellent Walkable City, I’m continuing on with the follow up, Walkable City Rules: 101 Steps to Making Better Places. 

Inspired by Speck’s books, and by Eric and Sara’s podcast, I started jotting down notes on how faith communities can help make their neighborhoods more walkable. In fact, I created the outline for this article while on a series of walks near my own church.

1. Help build a culture of walking and biking in your neighborhood.

In a Local-Motive session last year on how to pick your next bike lane battle, Strong Towns president Chuck Marohn talked about building a biking culture in your city. The same approach can be used to build a culture of walking. Chuck encouraged advocates to ask three questions, which I’ve adapted slightly:

1. Where do people now walk for transportation and not merely for recreation? Those people are your project supporters.

2. Where are those trips most difficult or dangerous? The struggles they can attest to are your rallying cry.

3. What is the quickest and cheapest way to alleviate that difficulty or danger? The simple and affordable project is the low bar you’re asking the community to cross.

Read more about using this guide here.

If we do this over and over, Chuck says, we build the culture of walking and biking, and its infrastructure, at the same time.

Note that this whole process involves humbly observing where people are experiencing real struggles in the day to day life of the neighborhood. This is why churches, temples, mosques, and other communities of worship can play such a vital role: they are often attuned, as many other institutions are not, to what neighbors need.

One way to discover how walkers, bikers, and people using wheelchairs experience the neighborhood your place of worship is in, is to get out and experience it yourself. As you walk, ask yourself some of these questions:

• Do I feel safe walking from our house of worship to a nearby grocery store? (Is there even a grocery store nearby to begin with?) 

• Does my walk feel comfortable? Is it interesting? Is there someplace worth walking to? 

• Who am I sharing the sidewalks with? 

• How are other people on foot or bike using the neighborhood now? Where are they struggling?

• Is there a particularly dangerous intersection near the church? 

• How can the faith community initiate, or join, efforts to address it?

There are a number of resources that can help guide your observations as you walk the neighborhood around your faith community. For example, Sara Joy has created a six-week series of walking guides for Christians called “Walk Your Block: Discovering the Story of Your Neighborhood.” Daniel Herriges wrote an article back in 2019 on how to conduct a “walking audit.” In Walkable City Rules, Speck recommends conducting a walkability study. Another resource I recommend—more inspiration than practical instruction—is On Looking: A Walker’s Guide to the Art of Observation, by Alexandra Horowitz. The book is structured around 11 walks Horowitz takes in her Manhattan neighborhood.

2. Make your own property more walkable.

There are things faith communities can do to their own property to contribute to greater walkability. These range from the relatively simple and cheap, to the more complex and expensive.

For example, faith communities can plant street trees. In Walkable City Rules, Speck recommends putting street trees almost everywhere. He describes how street trees protect sidewalks, reduce crashes, slow vehicles, shape space, absorb stormwater, cool the neighborhood, and increase property values, among other benefits. There is no better use of public funds, he says, and I think this is a great place for faith communities to start too. Places of worship should consider planting trees along the roads that bound their property. (At Strong Towns, we love the humble but hardworking street tree. For more on street trees, check out our Action Lab.)

Another relatively easy project a faith community can do is to add a mural to its street-facing walls. “In the same way that good trees provide spatial definition to streets that otherwise lack it,” Speck writes in Walkable City Rules, “good public art plays a remedial role, lending beauty and interest to places that would otherwise be repellant to pedestrian life.” Faith communities don’t need to wait for public money to get started. They could hire an artist from within their congregation or neighborhood to paint a mural on the outside of their building. A church in my own town did this recently and the results are lovely.

Oak Street Church is right on the edge of downtown Silverton, a town already known for its more than 30 public murals. A member of the congregation recently painted the mural on the side of the Oak Street Church building. It depicts an iconic dogwood tree from the neighborhood and a quote from the poet Mary Oliver: "Always there is something worth saying / about glory, about gratitude." (Source: Author.)

Other simple projects include adding wayfinding signs to your church, mosque, or synagogue property; converting excess street parking into parklets; hosting a pop-up traffic calming demonstration; or setting up a comfortable place for neighbors to rest.

Benches outside of a neighborhood synagogue in New York. (Source: Flickr.)

The church the author attends. The church's big parking lot is tucked in the back away from the road, the entrance is easy to find from the sidewalk, and walkers can rest at the table or bench—these all promote walkability. Unfortunately, when his family walks to church, they have to cross a two-lane highway with a crosswalk and not even a "beg button" to help slow traffic. (Source: Author.)

There are other things a faith community can do, too, though some are much bigger undertakings than a weekend tree-planting project. Huge parking lots, deep setbacks, entrances that aren’t visible from the street, missing sidewalks, “high-speed driveways”—all these and more affect how safe it is to walk to, from, or by your place of worship. When making decisions about your property, consider carefully how they can impact the neighborhood’s walkability.

3. Join (or start) conversations about walkability in your city.

My final recommendation for faith communities is one Eric Jacobsen mentioned in The Embedded Church podcast: get involved in conversations about walkability in your town or city. 

Try to come alongside people already advocating for walkability. Find kindred spirits attending city council sessions, planning commission meetings, and neighborhood association meetings. Is there a Local Conversation in your area you can connect with? Are there other walking groups you can connect with in your area? America Walks has a helpful resource where you can find organizations that are working at the state and local levels to make walking safe, routine, and enjoyable.

And if there isn’t a conversation about walkability already happening where you live, start one. (One low-lift idea: start an urbanism book club. I’ve heard of multiple congregations that have done this, reading books like Walkable City, as well as Suburban Nation, Happy City, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and the first Strong Towns book.) Chances are, there are already people who are passionate about this issue in your neighborhood. If Strong Towns advocates and faith communities can meet on this issue—perhaps on a sidewalk somewhere—there’s no telling what we can do together.

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